St. Joseph's Prep (Philadelphia), a national powerhouse football program and a perennial Pennsylvania power, was a laughingstock before Gil Brooks arrived in 1992. The Hawks were so bad, the five years before Brooks began coaching the football team at the school produced a combined 9-43 record, and its last Philadelphia Catholic League title came in 1977.
In 18 years, Brooks compiled a 162-57-2 record (a .738 winning percentage), won five Catholic League championships (the last one coming in 2005), a 101-19-2 league record, which included a 35-game winning streak from 2001-03 and a 55-game Catholic League regular-season winning streak from 1999-2007.
That run of success — the best run in St. Joseph’s Prep history — came to a halt Thursday, when Brooks was told he was fired by St. Joseph’s president, Father George Bur, with athletic director Jim Murray and principal Michael Gomez present at the meeting Thursday night.
The school released a statement which thanked Brooks for his years of hard work, but offered no explanation for his firing. Calls Monday to St. Joseph's athletic office were not immediately returned.
"With years of hard work, Gil built a strong, respected program," it said in the release. "We are grateful to him for establishing a tradition of excellence that will continue."
Such words mean little to Brooks.
"I was shocked, to say the least," said Brooks, 52, a 1975 Prep graduate, whose five Catholic League titles in the Philadelphia area equal late Egan coach Dick Bedesem, whose teams won five Catholic League crowns between 1963 and 1970. "I was asked to resign, and I never even sat down at the meeting; I told them no — and that was it. They said there was a complaint about my sideline behavior, and asked where it came from. I never got a clear-cut answer.
"I wanted an answer. But all I got back was that there were some complaints, and asked, ‘What kind of complaints?’ and Father Bur told me he didn’t have to tell me. That was it. The funny thing is that at our end-of-the-season meeting in January, they couldn’t say enough great things about me. Now all of a sudden, almost two months later, I can’t do anything right, that something’s wrong."
Brooks, a highly successful attorney, went on to say, "I really can’t explain it. I don’t know what to think, other than there was a personality difference between me and Father Bur. I'm not the coach anymore. I didn’t get my butt in the chair before Father Bur was asking me to resign. I just don’t think he understood what I did and how much commitment I gave to Prep."
Like being there in the offseason, sometimes on an April Saturday morning, doing plyo-metric drills with his team, to working passing camps on weekday evenings in mid-June, gathering all of his younger players and giving them a chance to prove themselves.
It was Brooks who financed the Prep weight room with his own money, and it was Brooks who put together the finances for Prep’s high-tech headsets for the coaching staff, and money from his own pocket to send out 1,000 DVDs to various colleges on behalf of his senior players. He’s gotten players into Michigan (Victor Hobson), Navy (Jeff Battipaglia and Neil Doogan), Penn State (Mark Arcidiacono), Syracuse (Jim McKenzie), Notre Dame (Steve Quinn) and Boston College (Seth Betancourt).
And if they didn’t wind up at major Division I schools, they usually wound up high-end academic schools like Penn, Yale, Dartmouth, or Harvard.
Brooks lived, ate and breathed Prep football. He helped generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to the private school with the Hawks’ success — and generated national exposure by playing a national schedule that featured Don Bosco Prep (N.J.), Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Philadelphia-area powerhouses North Penn, Central Bucks West and Neshaminy. The Hawks went 9-3 overall, 6-0 in the Catholic League Red Division last season, advancing to the Catholic Red (Class AAAA large-school) championship game, losing to arch-rival and eventual Class AAAA state champion La Salle, 35-28.
"We were all kind of in shock when we heard it," said one Prep player who is an underclassman and asked not have his name used. "I have to come back here and play, and it’s something I have to think really strongly about. Coach Brooks was so committed to us, in-season, off-season, it didn’t matter. The thing I can’t figure is why now, after all this time. I heard they fired coach Brooks because he used to yell and scream on the sidelines, but he’s been yelling and screaming for the last 18 years."
Then the player laughed and said, "If they’re going to fire coach Brooks for yelling and screaming, they better fire most of the high school coaches in the country for yelling and screaming, and almost everyone that coaches football. They all yell and scream at one time or another."
Brooks, however, pointed to one specific instance, where he was upset at Desmond Peoples for fumbling a punt in the La Salle Catholic League championship game.
"I wanted to know what went wrong, because Desmond has a pair of the surest hands of anyone in the Catholic League," Brooks said. "When I asked Father Bur if it was the Peoples’ family who complained, he told me ‘No,’ it came from somewhere else. I think that’s what baffles me the most. I’ve been coaching the same way for 18 years. Now this comes up?"
Yes, Brooks was prone to animated histrionics on the sidelines during a game — but he would also lope off his right arm for any of his players.
"You have that right," said a senior on the Prep team, who also asked not to have his name used. "The administration here doesn’t want us to say anything to the media about what happened to coach Brooks, but anyway you want to look at it, it was a screw-job and I feel bad for the players who play for Prep next season. The school is losing someone who was dedicated to his players, got guys into schools, I mean great schools, and someone who would do anything for us. Go down the roster and ask anyone. Coach Brooks was someone who’d go to bat for you. Now he’s gone. It’s embarrassing how this whole thing went down."
In the days following his firing, Brooks said he received more than 500 messages from hundreds of Prep alumni, area coaches, former and present players, all wondering the same thing he was: Why?
"I may never get that answer," said Brooks, who wasn’t certain what the future holds in terms of coaching again, but admitted a big chunk of his heart was ripped out. "I love the Prep. I loved coaching at the school I played for — and I loved the opportunity to coach the great young men. It was a big part of my life — and an opportunity that I’ll never forget."
Joseph Santoliquito covers high schools for the Philadelphia Daily News and is a contributor to MaxPreps.com. He can be contacted at JSantoliquito@yahoo.com.
